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Apollo has worked out an after-school schedule for Boxey. He did it shortly after Serina died, back when everyone was still offering to babysit, because Apollo had become slightly cynical since the Cylons destroyed almost everything he cared about. Part of him knew adopting a kid was a stupid coping mechanism, and he figured that he would start resenting Boxey if he didn’t schedule in some time for himself.
Apollo didn’t much like his cynical side, and worked hard to make sure that no one else ever saw it. He prayed that his father would never find out that his only remaining son had such unworthy thoughts.
He was determined, however, that there would never again be a fiasco like the time Boxey stowed away in the shuttle down to Ice Planet Zero and no one on the Galactica noticed. Things had settled down; missions were more and more infrequent; they hadn’t seen a Cylon in quatrons. Routine was beginning to set in across the fleet, followed quickly by boredom.
Barring the occasional mission, the secton schedule went like this: First Cycle was for family, and there was no school. Generally the Commander, Apollo, Athena, Sheba, and Boxey went to services together, and had a meal together afterward. Sometimes Starbuck or Boomer was invited. On Second Cycle, Apollo had Boxey after instruction period. On Third Cycle, Athena or Sheba took him. On Fourth Cycle, it was Apollo; on Fifth Cycle, Starbuck and Cassiopeia. On Sixth and Tenth Cycle there was no school. Before he was a father, Apollo had to work those days, and evenings too, but Commander Adama let the parents who piloted the fighters schedule their patrols to correspond to childcare. When Apollo was small, the Commander had always had to work Sixth and Tenth Cycles, and he remembered that his mother and father had some choice words behind closed doors on the subject.
On Seventh Cycle Apollo had Boxey again; Eighth Cycle Boomer took him; and Apollo got him Ninth Cycle. He could have arranged it differently, but it seems unfair to ask others to give up their Ninth Night. Starbuck for one always had at least a card game and usually a date with Cassieopoeia. Also, staying home with his son was a handy excuse for Apollo to deflect the hints, getting broader and broader by the secton, that he really needed to find a mother for his son. He was dreading the day the Commander might choose to bring it up.
He still didn’t know what his father really thought of Boxey. He didn’t hold out much hope of ever finding out; it was always hard to know what the Commander really thought of anything. The man didn’t seem to acknowledge that anyone could have feelings beyond doing the right thing and doing the wrong one. Of course, his father approved of Apollo doing the right thing after Serina died, but Apollo felt obscurely that he had let his father down by not carrying on the bloodline. Adama loved Boxey, of course – but Apollo couldn’t say whether it was because a grandfather must love his grandson, or whether he truly had a fondness for the boy.
And even if his father wished for a biological grandson, Apollo couldn’t even think about dating women again without feeling as if his carefully-constructed world were about to shake apart.
He knew he had it easy as a single parent: plenty of help from family and friends, a job that was flexible except when he was on a mission, three whole evenings to himself per secton. What’s more, he couldn’t ask for a more well-behaved kid. Boxey was no trouble these days; he didn’t get stubborn, he didn’t quarrel with the other children, he did his homework promptly, and he hadn’t had a tantrum since Serina died.
It was beginning to worry Apollo.
He loved his son, he knew this. And it wasn’t as if he wanted Boxey to scream and cry and fight and whine like a normal child; it was just that he’d like Boxey to be, well, normal. Not a model child from an old siress’s idealistic dream of childhood.
He knew that eventually he really would need to find a strong female influence for Boxey; Athena, strong as she was, had enough of kids at work, and it showed. Zac had been the one who always wanted children – Apollo bit down hard on that thought.
There was Sheba, but Sheba would come with sealing promises and shared quarters and missions biting his nails waiting for her to come back. Even if they were only to live together, it was too much like a wife.
Cassie was wonderful with Boxey – Cassie was wonderful with everybody – but Apollo didn’t feel he could ask her, at least not until she and Starbuck had sorted out what they were to each other. Apollo liked Cassie just fine, no matter what Starbuck said about him being uptight and old-fashioned about her profession. But it was an awfully intimate thing to ask someone to fill in a hole in your son’s life, and Apollo would rather not cross any more lines with Starbuck. Starbuck never said a word when he was told that Apollo and Serina had married while he was busy being presumed dead, but the resigned look in his eyes had punched Apollo in the gut. Starbuck never did believe that anyone could really care about him, and Apollo had gone and fed that insecurity.
Sometimes, worst of all, he wondered if he and Serina had ever been in love at all. Were they just two people, surviving a massive trauma, who clung to each other to keep out the reality of their loss? He had always had a bit of a crush on the beautiful newswoman from Caprica; his excitement at meeting her in person had helped him get through the awful rescue of the survivors of the Colonies. The sectons that followed had been all adrenaline: fleeing the Cylons, battling enemies within and without, training the new pilots to be battle-ready. They barely knew each other when she died.
The hot, desperate feeling of those cycles had faded; he no longer needed to bury himself in another human being simply to survive. And the thing that broke his heart was that he didn’t know whether it would have worked, after the adrenaline and grief receded. He didn’t know if they would have lasted. Was he just calling it love because he didn’t want to think he’d used a convenient pretty girl to claw his way out of hell?
Apollo sighed, and rested his forehead against the tilinium skin of the agro-ship. An extreme expense, and a horrible luxury: a grave for his beautiful wife, here amongst the flowers. Arranged by his father, and paid for Lords-knew-how; he had accepted the gift and not asked. He came here every week, to sit beside a plaque and talk to a wife he had barely known.
“I love Boxey. You know I do,” he whispered. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the cold of the ship skin against his cheek. Tears would freeze against the transparent metal, and leave no trace of his weakness.
But I don’t know if I love him because it’s my duty as a father to love my son, or whether it’s Boxey himself that I love.